Tribal Tuesdays ft. Birds

So last week we looked at the Pirate tribe and had a go at brewing, not one, but two standard decks! For this week we’re moving to the granddady of all multiplayer formats, commander/EDH and what better way to swoop into the format, than with birds!

A quick reminder for anyone new to the series, Tribal Tuesday is all about checking out some of the overlooked tribes in magic history and having some fun brewing in different formats. With that out of the way, let’s get onto the birbs!

The first creatures to bear the type Bird were Roc Hatchling and Circling Vultures in Weatherlight. Roc of Kher Ridges from Alpha would later be knighted to a bird making it the true, original bid. Birds are typically blue or white creatures with the occasional green one thrown in there with..flying, if that was any sort of surprise? In commander, tribal decks are really just a mash-up of a collection of cards that synergies with whatever tribe you’re building around. So through in a couple of birds, some lords for birds and whatever strong cards are in the colours you’re in and you have yourself a tribal commander deck! So, let’s talk about the brew!

Our commander leading the deck is Kangee, Aerie Keeper! (For anyone that knows me, this will come as a surprise as there is no red featured on the card)

Whilst the deck functions fairly well without the commander unlike other commander decks, if we get Kangee out and kick it as we cast, we can turn even our small birds into huge flying threats which can quickly knock a player out of the game over just a few turns! We only really want to play our commander fairly late into the game when we’ve got a few birds out to pump the team and get some surprise damage in!

The Lords!

Because birds are traditionally very small creatures, we need as many lords as we can fit into a 100 card deck, which is pretty easy actually.

As you can see, this is just a few of the lords in the deck so there’s a very good chance that we’ll draw at least one or two of them. Obviously, when we have to name a creature, we choose a bird, Soraya has been received an errata which gives all birds +1+1 and not just falcons. Soulcatcher’s Aerie is the MVP of them all when it gets going, essentially making it an easier to catch a version of our commander.

The Bird generators!

The way we win most games is by beating down with a huge flock of birds, and whilst the deck contains a huge amount of birds, we occasionally need ways to make some more!

All these extra birds really allow us to fill the board up and start overwhelming the opponents, and even when they’re small, can start fueling the Soulcatcher’s Aerie to make some beefy birds! Dovescape is the MVP in this section as its incredibly bonkers. Whilst we give birds to everyone, we’re countering spells we don’t want to resolve and more importantly, everyone laughs when it’s played, which is what a commander is about for me.

The card draw!

The blue/white guild of Magic: The Gathering, often called Azorius guild, has a different name for me, and that’s the card drawing guild. The probably with a lot of tribal commander decks, and one that I’ve come across in my goblin and Treefolk decks is that one board wipe when you start reaching a critical mass often knocks you out the game. Having to top deck a card each turn can be brutal when tribal decks excel the more you have of a certain tribe. Being in these colours really allows us to avoid this problem and prevent us from falling too far behind when a board wipe resolves! And they will!

The Ramp!

What’s the most iconic commander card ever? If your answer was anything other than Sol Ring, you’re wrong! Commander is the format for Artifact ramp in order to hit some explosive plays and high CMC spells! So, of course, we’ve included some in this deck as well.

Azorius Keyrune is the ultimate flavour Artifact as it ramps, and turns into a bird! Urza’s Incubator, whilst not directly generates mana, provides a 2 mana reduction to all birds we play, providing we name birds. (please don’t name anything other than birds)

As you can see the deck is full of everything that we would need as well as a whole ton of things I didn’t have enough time to mention! So as always check out the decklist and have a look at all the flavour! This has been my favourite brew in a long time, and despite not having any red cards, I do believe it’ll be the next deck that I pick up! Who doesn’t want to fill the board with tiny birds that grow into huge threats, draw tons of cards and play some of the most powerful cards in the blue and white colours? That’s exactly what this deck does!

As always, thanks for taking the time to read, anything I missed? And as always, what tribe should we cover next, got any underloved favourites? Let us know!